


Once in Every Show (There Comes a Song Like This)

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Everybody Lives, F/M, Happy Ending, Hatchetfield Universe, POV Emma, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:56:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23497117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: It starts off soft and low, and ends up with a kiss.Everybody might have survived the infection but there are still musical leftovers everywhere you look. And Paul and Emma still have the spotlight, even if they never did get the love song.
Relationships: Paul Matthews/Emma Perkins
Comments: 13
Kudos: 51





	Once in Every Show (There Comes a Song Like This)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DontOffendTheBees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontOffendTheBees/gifts).



> Title and summary combo are from 'The Song That Goes Like This' from Spamalot.
> 
> I've started a couple of fics since seeing this show and I have no explanation for why this was the first one to get finished. It started off from a conversation with [DontOffendTheBees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontOffendTheBees/pseuds/DontOffendTheBees/) (read their fic, it's amazing) along the lines of 'haha can you imagine if Paul and Emma lit up like in Stardust' and after that I'm not sure how to explain it. This is me trying do it in canon, although there's certainly an AU to be written there as well.

The meteor gets blown up, the link to the hivemind severed, la da di dah day's all around – or not, obviously. There's some awkward back and forth as to how to carry on, especially what with the people claiming amnesia who made everyone else think that they were _supposed_ to have amnesia, a whole clusterfuck while the government is gaslighting the rest of the country (and Clivesdale, but fuck Clivesdale). Eventually, though, they all seem to settle on this status quo thing where nobody talks about it. Not denying it, just...not talking about it. This weird gap in the conversation where you'd expect to find 'hey remember the singing zombie alien plague' connected to 'so, seen anything good lately'.

The more normal people try to be, though, the more they have to incorporate. Because there _are_ differences. Maybe not the kind of thing that makes or breaks a person, but things certainly run different here in Hatchetfield to anywhere else. At least, Emma reckons that must be the case, or else the whole country ignoring the opportunity for some solid Vines. (Or TikTok. Is it TikTok now? Whatever, point still stands, not like anyone can sue her for not giving a fuck about the Youth of America.)

There's this ‘walk’ (for want of a better word), for starters. You get more than a couple of Hatchetfield citizens together and they start moving in step, and not even in a spooky fascist way unless goosestepping involved more arabesques than they mentioned in History class. Then you've got the way people will speak in sync sometimes – not everyone, and not with everyone else, but the ones who moved in groups during That Time The World Almost Got Conquered Oh Never Mind Have Another Cup of Not Poisoned Coffee. Alice and Deb do it, definitely, same as most of Hatchetfield High. Whenever Emma sees the teens coming into the coffee shop, she tries to find something to do in the back, although honestly that was already her policy because, seriously, _fuck_ dealing with teenagers. The only reason she knows their names is because Alice is Bill's daughter and Bill is Paul's friend, and also you tend to remember the names of people who almost get your potential boyfriend killed on a big damn hero suicide mission (the first one).

The rest of the staff at Beanies can do it too, and theatre kids really are different because they seem genuinely delighted every time. At least they then have the decency to make this collective face like 'oh yeah, all of that murdering' and look around like anybody gives a shit about their own guilty secrets. Besides Emma, that is, but Emma's a coworker and the only one not to sometimes start humming a song about poisoned coffee so that's its own whole deal. Just as well she still needs this shitty job, since without her they'd probably set up some sort of cult worshipping the hivemind. She likes thinking of it like that – like she's actually making some noble sacrifice rather than failing to get her shit together after the apocalypse.

Technically she did though – get her shit together, that is. More together than before, anyway. Just, well, the plan was all sort of built around getting this botany degree and then Professor Hidgens stopped teaching to focus on developing Workin’ Boys but said he'd still tutor her in 'whatever you need, my dear'. You don't offer a dropout slacker like Emma that kind of an easy out, seriously. Especially since she is really _really_ not the kind of asshole who deals with stress by _working_ , Jesus. So she's getting one-on-one free tuition, but she still wants to get ahead on rent. It's still America, even if she is getting lucky, apart from the apocalypse thing.

Also, the part where she actually is trapped in Hatchetfield, for real this time. Downside of almost 100% recovery: the whole town has to stay right the fuck here. Emma still isn’t sure whether it’s better when she actually _can_ blame the government, now.

Anyway, yeah, the musical fallout thing. Way more hivemind and dancing than before, and people react weird to the colour blue. Not necessarily good or bad, just...weird. And sometimes Hidgens pokes at his stomach, and he's made Greg less of a major character in the show and those are probably connected. When Paul mentions Bill and Alice, he does that awkward pause thing where something is really complicated and he can't begin to put it into words or even understand it. There's also some office drama about...Charlotte? And either her husband or her boyfriend, or maybe her husband's girlfriend, Emma did not come out of all this a more sympathetic person and if you glaze over you're not supposed to ask questions about what you missed. Especially since Paul only talks about this stuff to fill the air or something. Awkward when talking and awkward when silent, that's her Paul.

Her Paul.

Okay, so, Paul's thing (and therefore her thing to deal with too). His 'apotheosis' spore bullshit left him not in sync with everyone else – or maybe that's just Paul – but way more in touch with the musical fantasy shit. Because this whole situation can't stop laughing at him, apparently, and sometimes Emma wants to laugh too because she's kind of an asshole and also that tragic expression of his is so close to a rain-sodden puppy that she has to laugh or else she'll start cooing over him or something else completely mortifying. And if that happens, well, then the Thing starts happening, and her retinas are having enough trouble as it is.

Stage lights suck. It's a theatre thing, exactly the sort of added hellscape that seriously ruins any magic if you're onstage and a normal human being. Quick changes suck, technical rehearsals suck, and stage lights can go burn in a fire. You layer up with these ridiculous costumes and then you have to sing and dance under a blinding furnace and try not to die of heat exhaustion, seriously, what is the fucking deal with that? And then you have spotlights in particular, where you have to emote and contort with anguish and hit a high A when the interrogation lamp cliché would be more pleasant. Like so much of theatre, it's awful unless you're the kind of attention whore where the attention overrides everything else.

Sometimes, with Paul, it's like he's under one of those spotlights. Not that there actually physically is one – the first few times she had to check, even though she's knows there's nothing like that sort of brightness anywhere near her shithole of an apartment – but he lights up, ready for the big solo. Without an actual lamp, though, it's like the light is coming from inside of him. Like he's glowing. 

One time she tried covering his face with her hands – nothing sinister, Jesus, she wasn't trying to suffocate him – and she could see this red glow around her fingers, and then Paul started laughing (ticklish, not expected but very cute) and it was more like when you try to block out the sunlight with your bare hands, the light shining out around the edges. Same thing when she kisses him with her eyes closed: dull red, the sense that there's something bright outside and you shouldn't look.

Obviously this is a weird enough thing in private, but it's their sort of weird, and it's kind of cool in its own way. Like, she apparently gets to this guy so much that it activates his zombie alien side. That's not something she can say about any of her other relationships ('relationships') and not just because of the biological impossibilities. In a way it's this (il)logical extension of those hearteyes he gives her – the ones that mean she has to make a terrible joke to try to make this less of a lovesong segue and then he starts fucking glowing and _fuck_.

One time they were doing great and she swears she heard fucking applause. It stopped the moment she stopped, Paul blinking up at her as she covered his mouth and squinted around his bedroom like he might be hiding an audience behind the alphabetised CDs. (That sounds super anal and, yeah, Paul isn't exactly a 'by the seat of his pants' kind of a guy, but he also only owns about twenty CDs so why the fuck not alphabetise your museum exhibit.) She didn't hear anything else and they, you know, carried on, and then it started up _again_.

God, Emma never thought of herself as an exhibitionist, but after a while you either don't get any or you just let the invisible non-existent hallucinatory audience do their thing.

The real people, though? Them, she still has a problem with. And this whole light show, with the bells and whistles, is getting to be a whole fucking deal that she wants nothing to do with.

"Ted keeps a pair of sunglasses in his desk now," Paul says as one of those cute conversation non-sequiturs, except that raises questions and after a slightly convoluted process it turns out that every time Paul heads back to the office from his 'coffee runs' he's still lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. So, great, the whole office is in on this. Which means that if Ted (that fucking asshole) sees Paul and Emma in the same place – which, you know, they're _dating_ – he starts screaming 'my eyes' or some other bullshit. Then Charlotte starts insisting on how cute the two of them are, and Bill keeps saying how happy he is for the two of them like they might forget or something, and this is why Emma has never once done PDA, ever. She still doesn't, in the traditional sense, but, guess what, now she does in the fucking extraterrestrial sense.

"How come you don't glow like he does?" Zoey asks one time – not in a natural concerned way, but with a very clear judgy tone which is pretty rich coming from a poisoner and helicopter-crasher.

"I don’t know, Zoey, I guess my bulb needs changing."

"Poor Paul."

Poor Paul. What the fuck. Like Zoey actually cares about the two of them.

And here's the thing – another thing, Emma has a whole pile of things to get through here, but this is a fucking wild and super awful thing – it isn't that Emma _doesn't_ glow. That would be the easy version of all this. She'd tease and rib Paul and he'd blush and glow at the same time and she could handle that. That would be so much better.

But oh, no. The universe couldn't let her have that one. Like with everything else in the last few years, it just had to double on down there, so while Paul is shining away in his spotlight, guess what? _So is Emma._

She doesn't know if it spreads from him – she's never really tried making it happen when she's on her own, why would she invite that shit in – or if it's from that grey/blue time between the other Paul showing up with all his clappy-happy friends and her waking up with a drip in her arm. Really, it doesn't make any difference. Dumb as it is, she's not leaving Paul, so this would be the situation anyway. 

Just...Fuck. The only reason nobody's caught on is that he shines _that fucking brightly_ around her. That's her, hiding in the shadows again, even if in this case the shadows don't exist in the same way.

Maybe if she wanted to poke at it in a self-loathing my-life-is-shit kind of way, she'd start reading into that. Like, what does it say about her that she can't match up? Is she that incapable of being happy? Except then Paul starts beaming metaphorically and literally and, you know what, she's good. She can let him have that one. Since fuck knows that _nobody can know about this._

\---

So far, as far as she can tell, only Hidgens has worked it out. Figures. 

Paul drops her off with a smile and a kiss that maybe starts edging into applause territory, and when she walks into Hidgens' underground musical workshop/science lair, the professor appears out of fucking nowhere with a flourish and declares, "Just as I suspected!"

He's delighted, obviously – a correct deduction _and_ he gets a musical moment without the death, which has _clearly_ been getting to him. He starts on one of his elaborate excitable lectures, which Emma maybe tunes out a bit somewhere around 'empathetic synchronisation of bioluminescence', so sue her. She has groceries to put away. (Apparently Hidgens’ attitude towards online ordering is that it was ‘what Alexa used to do’, as his eyes go wide and presumably tragic.)

Where Emma does start paying attention, though, is when Hidgens seizes her by the arms with intense eyes like he's trying to beam the revelation into her brain. "My dear, you have been given a rare gift: a glimpse into a different plane of reality!"

Emma frowns. "It doesn't seem like much of a 'glimpse' if it happens every day."

" _Every day_?" And there Hidgens goes again, gazing off into the camera or at the audience or whatever it is he does when his brain takes off. Emma used to picture it like ‘A Beautiful Mind’ or something. Too bad her frames of reference are pretty fucking different now. "Imagine: to exist at a level where your emotions influence reality; where your love can bring recognition on an atomic level!"

"Er," Emma says, "I'm not in love with him."

"But of course you are!" Hidgens declares, spinning around and raising his arms as if he might launch himself backwards away from her denial. Fucked up as it might sound, it's nice hanging out with someone who already acted like this _before_ the meteor. "It shines brightly in the night! And the day, for that matter."

"That's just." Emma shrugs. "It's a weird leftover meteor thing. Like the Stepford talking."

"Or the cuckoos – a shared alien consciousness carrying echoes," Hidgens muses, before interrupting his distraction, much to her disappointment. "No! We have data in abundance, my dear, and you two are the only observed manifestations of this phenomenon!"

"Yeah, well," Emma knows this isn't the case, she _knows_ it, "Paul didn't get infected the same way as most people, and I...am usually next to Paul?"

"But you weren't infected by the same spores," Hidgens insists, and for all that Emma does not want to have this conversation in any form she does appreciate that he's taking her seriously. Then again, that also means that if he gets a different conclusion from the same data then he's way less likely to drop this.

"No, but," Emma pauses, trying to think, "we must have been close enough, right? Or else it wouldn't be happening?" Fuck, she didn't mean to make that a question. That's like Arguing 101, even before you add academic bullshit on top.

Hidgens makes a gesture with his hand like he's about to launch into Hamlet. Emma is only okay with this because at least Hamlet doesn't sing. (Mostly. She's still recovering from that 'Funny Boy' horror show some backpackers started singing once in Rio.) "In any musical," he starts, with the same flair on that fucking word as ever, "or at least in most – due to developments in the genre of which I do not approve," he narrows his eyes the way he usually does when people use 'succulents' and 'cacti' interchangeably, "there exists a leading couple, the romantic focus of the show. To them is granted the Love Song – the embodiment of the emotional heart of the tale." He clutches a hand to his chest and Emma remembers the various versions of Workin' Boys' love songs, which get written and rewritten as often as Hidgens changes his mind about who the couples even are.

When Hidgens doesn't actually move again, frozen in overdramatic performative anguish, Emma starts to shift awkwardly. "Professor?"

Without moving, Hidgens says, "I told you to call me Henry, Emma."

"Okay, er... Henry?"

He looks round at her and he might actually be blinking back _tears_. He's definitely blinking a lot more than usual. "Emma, you have every right to deny your feelings should you wish to, but please," he grabs her hands again and she can't look away, "don't deny his."

Emma stumbles out of Hidgin's lab (lair? bunker?), every step seeming to form an endless rhythm of 'what the fuck what the fuck'. It's late and the moon is looking like its own spotlight sent to chase Emma home lest there be some sort of dilemma breakout song. (‘Lest’. This is the shit that happens when you spend time with Hidgens.) That would be really, super bad, and not just because of the implications about the infection. Emma doesn't want to deal with this shit internally, much less with a backing track.

The real spotlight's there in her apartment when she unlocks the door, although Paul isn't actually putting the moon to shame or some shit. There's just this faint luminescence to his skin, like one of those cave plants. "I thought you were still at the professor's."

"Technically he's not a professor anymore. You need students – actual students," Emma adds quickly. When Paul starts pouting (and denying it), she relents. "And yeah, sorry I didn't call, I...needed to think."

"Oh. Okay." Shit. The glow's getting dimmer, like Emma couldn't tell anything from the way he's curling in on himself.

"Shit, no, Paul, I," Emma says, each syllable as unhelpful as the previous one. She dumps her jacket on top of her bag – Paul's not a fan of when she does that but she's still dealing with sharing any space with another person that doesn't involve some sort of retail barrier – and crosses over to the couch, throwing herself down next to him. Her way of curling isn't anything like as organic as his (how someone that tall can lose that many inches is a mystery to throw at Hidgens some time), it's more like crumpling up a piece of paper. Still, it's worth it to tuck in next to him.

After a moment she reaches up and pointedly yanks his arm down and around her, where it’s hovering awkwardly. Not that Paul stops radiating awkward energy but at least now he’s not also dealing with a build-up of lactic acid. That just sucks.

“…Emma?”

“Thinking.” Still thinking. 

A little later, after time spent with his thumb rubbing the small hairs at the base of her skull, the scenario that’s unfolding inside her head hasn’t gone away at all. If anything, it’s clearer than ever, and fuck it, if this is some musical shit then maybe she can steer into it, just a little.

She straightens up, wincing a bit as her retail-and-backpacking-ravaged spine clicks. Instantly Paul gives her space, or at least he tries to before she’s crawling into his lap proper, looking down at him with her hands framing his face. “Okay… Don’t say anything.” And she closes her eyes.

She thinks about Paul – about every time she’s visited their conversations in retrospect, the realisations in the shower or wiping down the coffee machine as a stray line reaches her from the past and _holy shit he’s always liked her like this_. Naturally then her brain wants to start beating itself up about how she never noticed at the time, the way they almost missed this, but for once Emma has an actual goal in mind and she wrestles it back on track. Because it’s not the missed opportunities that are the point; it’s that this is something rare and incredible and it’s _hers_. Paul’s hers. The man almost blew himself up and only partly to save the world, and he’s never told her as much and yet she _knows_. 

She thinks of how he used to sleep ramrod-straight. How now he wakes up as crumpled as the duvet.

“ _Em_ ,” Paul breathes.

Emma halfway opens her eyes, frowning – he sounds fucking _reverent_ – and then they go all the way wide and then some. His whole face is lit up, the blue in eyes clear and bright (all the blues); light’s picking out the lighter browns in his hair (she never has bothered with art theory), washing away the lines in his face that form at the slightest provocation. And while he _is_ glowing, that’s not what’s causing it.

“The fuck,” Emma says, because she’s always great at killing the mood.

Paul’s face does wrinkle with a grin, except then he pushes up and pushes their lips together and she closes her eyes again with no small amount of relief. You can practically hear the music swelling; someone near the back gives an obnoxious whoop. Applause, louder, final. 

It’s real life, not theatre. Still worth pretending there’s a finale, though.


End file.
